Press releases

Oxfam is supporting a humanitarian response for refugees arriving from Sudan into South Sudan’s Renk and Raban counties in Upper Nile State, and in Chad’s Sila province. 

In response to the selection today of Ajay Banga as President of the World Bank for a five-year term beginning 2 June, Katie Malouf-Bous, interim Head of Oxfam International’s Washington DC Office, said: "The true test of Ajay Banga starts now: to reorient the World Bank to tackle the extreme inequality that robs billions of people of economic security and dignity. We need huge new investments in development but we need them to be publicly-led and purposed to lift people out of poverty —and we need guardrails around private finance that has run riot for too long."

In reaction to the GRFC 2023, Oxfam Global Food and Economic Security Lead, Emily Farr, said:  “For global hunger to rise for a fourth consecutive year in a world of plenty is a stain on our collective humanity. Decades of progress made to end poverty and hunger are being fast-reversed by conflict, economic shocks, and climate change.  

The top-paid CEOs across four countries enjoyed a 9 percent pay hike in 2022, while workers’ wages fell 3.19 percent during the same period, reveals new analysis from Oxfam ahead of International Workers’ Day (1 May). 

Responding to the EU’s proposed reform of pharmaceutical regulations, Piotr Kolczyński, EU Health Policy Advisor at Oxfam and the People’s Vaccine Alliance, said: "Reducing the exclusivity of data is a step towards improving access to medicines within Europe, but it is total hypocrisy for the EU to protect the right to health in their own borders while undermining it elsewhere. 

Today the European Parliament  Committee on Budgets voted on the Committee's own initiative report on new own resources to finance the EU budget and EU political priorities.

An important International Monetary Fund (IMF) initiative to shore up poor people in the Global South from the worst effects of its own austerity measures and the global economic crisis is in tatters.

Today, the Development Assistance Committee of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD DAC) published its preliminary figures on the amount of development aid for 2022. 

In response to the publication today of the World Economic Outlook by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Nabil Abdo, Oxfam International’s senior policy advisor on international financial institutions, said: “The IMF is now saying that fiscal consolidation during economic crisis —like today’s economic maelstrom— hasn't served its primary purpose of reducing debt. It’s positive that the IMF is finally admitting this painfully evident fact, but it’s hugely frustrating that it continues to push austerity measures on poor borrowing countries facing huge economic challenges." 

New Oxfam analysis describes a $27 trillion black hole – accumulating at around $3.9 trillion a year to 2030 – that low-and-middle income countries face to meet climate-related loss and damages, adaptation, and mitigation measures, along with their health, education and social protection needs.

Renewed violent clashes involving non-state armed groups have exacerbated the hunger and
protection crises in the Democratic Republic of Congo, leaving 10 million people in urgent
need of humanitarian assistance, warned Oxfam, CARE International and the Danish Refugee
Council today.

Today, the EU chose fuel over food in the provisional agreement reached on the Renewable Energy Directive (RED), the EU law that incentivises the burning of crops to fuel cars and trucks.

Over 60 activists, social movements, and women food producers that have gathered in Maputo,
Mozambique for Women Food Convening 2023 conference say that the current global food
system is exploitative, broken, unjust, marginalises women and exacerbates gender inequalities
and hunger particularly in low-income countries.

As Yemen enters its ninth year of war, its people are facing a devastating humanitarian crisis with more than two million children acutely malnourished. Rounds of currency depreciation, an economy on the brink of collapse, and sharp increases in the cost of fuel and other key commodities, have left millions more Yemenis in danger of catastrophic hunger. 

Up to 90% of water boreholes in parts of Somalia, Northern Kenya and Southern Ethiopia have entirely dried up.

Oxfam International is pleased to announce the appointment of Amitabh Behar as its new interim Executive Director. Behar is currently Executive Director for Oxfam India. He will assume the role for approximately 12 months, starting on 1 May 2023.

Responding to the publication today of the IPCC’s Synthesis Report (SYR), Oxfam’s Climate Policy Lead Nafkote Dabi said: “This is, literally, the last chapter. The science shows that limiting global heating to 1.5°C is still possible —but only just. Unless we pull the emergency brake on deadly carbon pollution, ‘unheard-of’ heatwaves, storms, droughts and floods will continue to become more frequent and hit more places and people."
 

In response to the EU’s donor conference for Turkiye and Syria earthquakes, Oxfam calls on the international community to leave no one behind in providing aid to the communities affected.

Survivors of last month’s devastating earthquakes in southern Türkiye have been dealt a fresh blow as heavy rains and severe flooding hit the region, with further downpours forecast in coming hours.  

Three in every four people in Aleppo have had to reduce daily meals since the earthquake and nearly all of them say they have taken on extra debt or their children out of school in order to cope, says Oxfam.